The Northern Clemency

by Philip Hensher (Knopf; $26.95)

The English middle class is scrutinized in this sprawling account of two families on an affluent Sheffield housing estate. The Sellerses, carried north by a job transfer with “the Electricity,” arrive on Rayfield Avenue in 1974, just as Katherine Glover is stamping to death her youngest child’s illicit pet snake in front of the house opposite. Despite this traumatic beginning, the Sellerses and the Glovers gradually develop the ties of proximity—teen-agers becoming friends, younger children caught up in playground games, wives sharing confidences and glasses of wine. Hensher’s attention is on the foreground, revealing ordinary life through impressive, often funny set pieces and assiduously observed dramatic episodes, which almost compensate for the lack of an organized plot. The transformative events of the Thatcher years (notably, the local coal miners’ strike of 1984) unfold in the distance; “clothy” vol-au-vents are as indicative as miners’ wives collecting donations of tinned food. ♦

Sign up to get the best of The New Yorker delivered to your inbox every day